RETRODICTIVE ILLUSION (The)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2871 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
It seems always possible to retrospectively “predict” some event that occured. This implies the a posteriori reconstruction of a deterministic chain of succesive events which led to the most recent one.
The concurrence of multiple causal events at the ultimate instant induces the illusion that the event had one cause only, that this cause in turn had one cause only, and so on in a retrodictive way. This is of course the result of a selection made by the observer and goes long to explain many heated debates and even lawsuits centered on “responsability for…” such or such situation.
However true causality is complex, as the result of growing interferences between numerous more or less simultaneous or successive local events.
The retrodictive illusion leads to the rigorously causal predictive illusion, which, during much time did conceal deterministic chaos.